Battlers of the Bands
by templetonfugate
Summary: Finally freed from pistachio duty, B.O.T.T. agents Vinnie Dakota and Balthazar Cavendish are faced with an unprecedented, career-changing assignment: Stopping famed glam rock band Love Handel from ever breaking up. Easier said than done. AU Eventual Dakvendish
1. Folie à Trois

"Love Handel?" Vinnie Dakota repeated. He ran the name through his mind but was only drawing up blanks. His knowledge of music began in the mid-sixties and ended at the stroke of midnight on the first of January nineteen-eighty, unless the handful of Mozart facts he'd picked up from Cavendish counted for anything. Which, as far as Mr. Block was concerned, probably didn't.

Cavendish gave him a hard poke to the rib cage with his elbow. A decided un-manly yelp was covered by the sound of Mr. Block's voice.

"Love Handel, the finest band of the twentieth _and_ twenty-first century! A gift to the musical world if there ever was one!"

Either his continued breaking of the space-time continuum was finally cracking Vinnie Dakota's mind like an egg or Mr. Block had just wiped a tear away from his left eye. Right then, he couldn't decide which was worse.

"No matter what happened in my life, Love Handel always had a song to get me through it. They are the unsung poets of history."

Dakota snuck a quick glance at Cavendish, whose own eyes were so wide that they looked ready to pop out of his skull. Either this recipe called for two eggs or-

_Or they were off pistachios duty._

Just the smell of those damn nuts made his stomach flip like an acrobat. He'd seen pistachios explode like a block of sodium dropped in water, and burn like dry wood under a heat wave. Pistachios had been crushed, vaporized, and entirely rewritten on the molecular structure under his watch. (Okay, so that was actually the Murphy kid's fault, but he's Milo. What was Dakota gonna do?) As far as he was concerned, they couldn't go extinct fast enough.

"And despite all of their accomplishments, I cannot help but imagine what other wonders they could have made had they never broken up and gone on hiatus. Those were wasted years if there ever were ones!"

Giving Cavendish one last glance, Dakota stepped further towards the screen and shot Block a million-dollar smile. "Say no more, chief. We'll get Love Hurdle-"

"-Love Handel!"

"Tuh-may-toe, toe-mah-toe ta you too!" Turning back towards Cavendish, he pulled the man forward by his waist. "Cav and I will have your boys back together and making music like... Like they never broke up in the first place!"

Cavendish should have yelled at Dakota right then and there with every expletive he previously had swallowed down his tongue. He probably even should have slapped Dakota. Sweet Egyptian mother of Moses, he sure as hell deserved that. Really, his partner should have done _anything_ to stop what happened next.

_Mr. Block smiled._

Dakota's blood pressure spiked to record levels at the sight. Cavendish just barely forced back a gasp. For however long Vinnie Dakota lived - and travelling through time on a regular basis certainly made keeping track of the birthdays twenty times harder than it already was - he would never forget that image, even if the rest of his brain turned to mush.

It couldn't be called a true smile. Mr. Block's lips didn't point upward in the correct way, and his teeth looked as though they ached at the movement.

"I'll hold you two to that!"

Even when the screen went blank, Dakota couldn't stop staring into it. His own face stared back at him. Somewhere thousands of kilometers away, in an ocean few survived sailing through, an army of Dakotas were screaming in unity at the top of their lungs, on the verge of rioting.

Cavendish cleared his throat. "Love Handel?"

Dakota rubbed his temples. "Love Handel."

Well, this was going to be... _Something._


	2. Tap On, Tune In, Chop Out

"Hey, Cav, do you think Block's ever been in love? I mean with something besides the sound of his own voice." They'd been listening to Love Handel's nineteen-eighty-four hit on repeat for almost twenty minutes. Dakota could only guess how many times afterwards it would play on an endless loop within his own head.

Cavendish looked up from his notebook, which he had been scribbling into ever since Dakota hit play on his phone. "Why would you expect me to know that?"

Dakota shrugged. "Just wondering. Me? I can't see it."

"The real question is if anyone would ever love him."

The two snickered.

* * *

Dakota buckled into his seat and leaned back, meeting his reflection's gaze in the Bug's rear view mirror.

"So where are we going?" While nineteen-eighty-six seemed like the best year, at that point the band members were probably too far apart to get back together. Perhaps it would be best to meet them at the height of their fame when arguments were (hopefully) less frequent.

Really, Dakota couldn't see what drove the group apart. He fought with Cavendish all the time and they were still together. And what was running a rock band compared to dealing with the intricacies of space time?

Cavendish put the key in the ignition and started the car. Rather than setting a different year, he drove out of the strip mall's parking lot and headed towards a nearby highway.

"Uh, did you not hear me the first time?" Dakota scratched at his arm. "Cav, _when_ are we going?"

"Unless we want to be back on pistachio duty for the rest of our unnatural lives, we cannot just go jumping back a few decades. What we need is someone with experience about this, but also someone we can trust."

"Yeah?" Maybe it was a consequence of spending forty hours a week with Cavendish, but right then the names and faces of everyone he knew suddenly left Dakota's head.

"You mean you really don't know who I'm talking about?"

"Will it make you happy if I pretend to?"

Cavendish sighed. "Do me a favor and leave the interrogation to me, then."

Dakota bit back a question forming on his tongue.

About ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of a white two-story house protected by a spiked metal fence. The lawn was neatly decorated, with a stone path leading towards the front steps. Dakota's eyes widened at the spikes. They were an accident waiting to happen if he ever saw one.

If Cavendish noticed them, he sure didn't show it. The gate didn't so much as creak when he pushed it open, motioning for Dakota to follow him.

At the front door, he adjusted his hat and tie before giving three quick, hardy knocks.

The lanky boy who opened the door couldn't have been more than fifteen. He was dressed in a Jefferson County Middle School hoodie and faded jeans. Though Dakota tried not to stare, he couldn't help noticing that one of his arms was in a cast.

For a moment, the three stood blinking at one another.

"You don't have any stakes."

Cavendish and Dakota looked to one another.

"What?" Dakota mouthed, to which Cavendish could only shrug in reply.

"Look, if this is about Mr. Drako, all that vampire stuff is just a rumor. Don't you need a permit to even carry sharp wooden sticks around, anyway?"

"Please do excuse me, son," Cavendish said, clearing his throat, "but I have no idea what you're talking about."

"So you aren't the guys who were at our dance last month? The teacher's parents?"

"Oh! Oh yeah, that's us!" Dakota slapped on a smile. "You've got a great memory, kid! Bet that helps you in school."

"Yeah..." He pulled the door back a little further. "So, uh, why are you guys here?"

Dakota stepped forward. "Oh, we're here to see somebody." He looked to Cavendish. "Right?"

Cavendish straightened his glasses. "I do believe we've already found him." He pointed a finger towards the boy. "Tell me, are you a former Lumberzack?"

As soon as the last word left his partner's lips, the boy started screaming. He slammed the door shut with such a force that it was a miracle that it didn't come off of its hinges.

* * *

"Now, Zack, is that any way to treat school faculty?" Dr. Underwood held out a plate laden with mugs of coffee towards the duo.

"Sorry, Mr. Cavendish and Mr. Dakota." The boy didn't look up from his lap as he spoke.

"Mr. Dakota was my father." Though he'd never been a big fan of coffee, Dakota took a quick sip. How Arabica beans never went extinct was beyond him.

"What did you say brings you here again?" Dr. Underwood took a sip of her own coffee.

"A talent show as part of a school fundraising drive," Cavendish explained. "We have to address fundraising issues somehow."

"Yeah, what he said."

Zack groaned. "I don't see how that yacht is my fault."

"Well, you see..." Cavendish rubbed at his chin. "We feel that your musical history could attract ticket sales."

"No!"

"Zackary Andrew Underwood! I raised you better than this." Dr. Underwood turned back to them. "I must apologize for my son. This is a bit of a touchy subject for him."

"Well-"

Cavendish was cut off by a sudden stream of beeps. Dr. Underwood pulled a square black metal device from her pocket with a non-illuminated LED screen. Her brow furrowed.

"Oh dear, this is going to be a long one." She hurried towards where her son sat and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before hurrying out of the kitchen. "Zack, you and your dad will have to order pizza tonight. Be sure to save me a slice! If I get home by tomorrow morning, it'll make for a good breakfast."

"Of course, Mom!"

It was only after she'd grabbed her purse and jacket and hurried out the door that Cavendish spoke again.

"As I was trying to say earlier, my partner and I need your assistance. We know you have a history with the group the Lumberzacks."

* * *

"You kids thought we were vampire hunters?" Dakota laughed, sending some of his hot chocolate sloshing out of his mug and onto the table. He grabbed a napkin and quickly wiped it up.

Zack wiped cookie crumbs from his upper lip. "Well, you did have wooden stakes."

"Those were only for holding down nuts. The food kind, anyway." Dakota grabbed another cookie.

"Yeah, well what else were we supposed to think?" Zack ran a hand through his hair. "So you guys are really time travelers?"

"You better believe it, kid."

"Hey, after everything that's happened to me, I believe it."

"What do you mean?" Cavendish asked.

Zack waved his hand absently. "Weird things tend to happen with me and my friends. You get used to it after a while." He paused. "I'm still not getting how I fit into this, though."

"As I said earlier, according to my research you were once the lead singers of the Lumberzacks."

Zack snorted. "You don't have to keep reminding me."

"Well excuse me, prince." Dakota licked crumbs from his fingers.

Cavendish glared at him. "And our mission is to stop the band Love Handel from breaking up. We thought you might have insight into why a musical group might dissolve."

Zack's face hardened. He turned, looking out the kitchen windows. "You've seen the music video, haven't you?"

"Of course," Cavendish spoke.

"If there's anything about the band I miss, it's that. Seeing the finished product go viral, hearing that song on the radio, it was incredible. But the careers we led, the lives we had, it just isn't for everybody." He stood from his stool. "The music was fun, but that was the tip of the iceberg. No one but us saw the parties, the girls, the fighting that went on backstage... Being in a band, I felt on top of the world, but I was always on the verge of falling."

"Yeah?" Dakota asked.

"Well, if Love Handel is anything like us, then they just couldn't handle the pressure. Maybe they realized that it wasn't worth staying together."

"What do you mean?" Cavendish asked.

"Well, my life's wild now, but back then it was... Well, it was wild too. In a different way. Do you get me?"

Dakota nodded in that absent way he always did when Mr. Block went off on a long tangent. Cavendish's own face was unreadable.

"And eventually I realized that I just couldn't deal with that any longer. That was why I left the band."

"Is there anything that could have been done to stop that?"

Zack shrugged. "Who knows? It seemed like the right idea at the time."

"You certainly don't seem too sad about the break up." Dakota commented. The boy's scream still rang in his ears.

"Yeah, well, that's just how it was for me. Maybe I'm wrong and Love Handel was completely different."

"Did somebody say Love Handel?"

Dakota turned. A heavy-set man stood at the entrance of the kitchen. Pulling his coat off and dropping it on the back of a chair, he hurried towards the table.

"I haven't heard that name in a while, not since I took your mother to their reunion concert this summer. Funny, it feels like it was over a decade ago."

"Dad!" Zack hurried over and gave him a quick hug. "I was just talking to my teacher's parents!"

"What does Love Handel have to do with that?"

"Oh, they're running a talent show to raise money for the school!" He shot a wink towards the duo. "They thought maybe my friends and I might want to cover some songs."

"Sounds like a great idea to me! I'd love to hear Milo's accordion rendition of 'You Snuck Your Way Right Into My Heart.'"

"Yes, well..." Cavendish stood and brought his empty mug of coffee to the sink. "We've considered it, and we're not sure if we need the act after all. There are other fundraising ideas."

"Lots of them!" Dakota added.

"That's a real shame, Zack." Mr. Underwood patted his son's shoulder.

"Thank you for your time, young man." Cavendish washed his mug out. "Would you mind if we called you if we needed any assistance again?"

He shrugged. "I guess that's fine."

After five minutes of pleasantries, the two were back out on the front porch.

"Thanks again for stopping by," Mr. Underwood said. He turned back towards Zack. "I do hope you two reconsider about the show. I would love for my son to be involved in more extracurricular activities."

With their luck, Dakota realized, they just might end up needing him.

Once they were back in the car, Dakota reached for the time dial. "Can we go back in time yet?"

Cavendish swatted his hand away. "This is only the beginning. We don't know nearly enough about Love Handel."

"And whose fault is that? I didn't come all this way out here just to drill some kid on recently dissolved boy bands."

Cavendish rolled his eyes. "I do hope you're ready for a haircut."

Dakota sat up. "A what?"

"You'll understand when we get there."


End file.
